


Put the Load on Me

by EducationalAdmiral



Series: Something New Everyday [1]
Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Childhood, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss of Parent(s), Minor Character Death, Origins, Pre-Canon, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 13:52:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11761269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EducationalAdmiral/pseuds/EducationalAdmiral
Summary: Jack didn’t remember when it started- he was too young back then, far too young to remember it. He could assume it was when his mother was whisked away in the night, her light fading suddenly. He could assume it started then, but he couldn’t remember.///Or, Jack learns how to cope with his father's alcohol abuse and the consequences of it.





	Put the Load on Me

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains discussions of alcohol abuse and the loss of parents. If this sort of content bothers you, proceed with caution!

Jack didn’t remember when it started- he was too young back then, far too young to remember it. He could assume it was when his mother was whisked away in the night, her light fading suddenly. He could assume it started then, but he couldn’t remember.

He knew that at some point his father picked up a bottle and never put it down, but he didn’t remember the instant that it all started. Maybe, deep down, he did, but he’d pushed it away. He didn’t need to remember it. He didn’t need to remember the father he used to have-  _the family_  he used to have. It was long gone, and it was easier to pretend he’d never had it in the first place

He remembered the money getting tighter when his father was fired after too many half drunk or hungover work days of lacking productivity. He remembered not knowing what to do. He remembered watching his father’s eyes grow sunken in. He remembered watching his cheekbones protrude against his skin, skin that had grown a layer of sweat that never faded, skin that became red and flushed and never returned to normal. Jack pretended not to see it. That was easiest.

He did remember the day he became a newsie. He was determined to help. The little money he earned he was able to control- he made sure it went towards food and clothes and fresh water and rent. He was little, he knew. Too little for this to be his job, but he took it. He’d do whatever he could to keep his small,  _small_  family together. He’d do whatever it took to save his father from himself.

For a while, his father seemed to get better. The drinking lessened, even if it never disappeared completely and he still had bad nights, but his father started working again. Odd jobs- nothing stable, but it was work and it brought in money and most of it,  _most of it,_  went to healthy things- not die hard habits. Jack was happy- but he tried not to be  _too_ happy because he’d heard the stories from the other newsies he saw. A lot of them had been in the same boat as him, once. Part of Jack was mad at himself for being thankful. He shouldn’t be happy that anyone had been through what he was going through, but the smaller part of him was happy to have people understand him. People he could talk to. The newsies- they started to quickly become like a second family to him.

An older one of the boys took Jack under his wing. The boy-  _Jack wasn’t sure he could really be considered a boy, he might’ve only been seventeen, but he acted way past his age-_ had been where Jack had. The boy-  _the man-_  told Jack about his father. The older boy’s father had been a drinker, too, he’d explained. His old man and drank himself stupid night after night till, eventually, it killed him. The older boy said it had been hard- but not as hard as it should’ve been. He said he hadn’t known his dad in years. His dad wasn’t his dad anymore when he lost him. Jack wondered if the same thing would happen to him, but he didn’t vocalize the fear. He was certain the older boy had seen his fright anyway because the boy had said to him, “I mighta lost my dad, but I think I found somethin’ that makes up for it. You don’t gotta worry.”

At the time, Jack hadn’t understood what that meant.

After a couple of years of working as a newsie to help what he could and his father finally seeming to get back on his feet, everything had seemed good again, or good enough, at least. His mother was gone, but his memories of her had faded into ghosts anyway, the pain from it was only a phantom. His father seemed to begin to feel the same way. At least, Jack had thought.

He didn’t remember the day well because, at the beginning, it had seemed like any other day. He woke up with the morning sun and ran with the other boys to the distribution center to sell papers, his father waving goodbye behind him and then getting dressed to go search for his own odd job of the day. It was just a day- a day just like any other that blurred into the days before- but not the day after.

What Jack did remember was coming home that night to an empty house, and, while he was somewhat confused, he didn’t question it.  Sometimes his father’s odd jobs kept him out late. Jack figured that was the case- it happened sometimes. His father’s absence didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t a bad sign-  _it wasn’t an omen-_

But it was.

He woke up in the morning when the sun came peering into his window. He rose from his blankets and cozy bed, the heat that had held him securely disappearing as he pulled himself from it. A faint feeling of uneasiness grew in his stomach as he ate a jam covered piece of bread, ghosting around the house and looking for signs of his father, but there weren’t any. The door was as locked as he’d left it, the pillows still in place on the couch, no jacket or hat on the stand by the door, no smells of dirt or oil or work any different than what had come in with him after Jack’s own work the day prior. Everything was in order- so why did something feel so  _off?_

Still, he left the house and made his way to the distribution center, joining the growing group of boys with relative ease. He looked around the crowd for that familiar face- that older boy that was reminded so much of a younger version of himself in Jack- but he couldn’t find him. He watched as all the newsies heads swiveled to the board as the headline was put up.

_**Drunken Man Struck By Car, Dead By Morning.** _

Jack’s heart stopped beating for an instant. A drunken man- a drunken man could be any man. Surely…  _surely it wasn’t…_

But he bought his papers and the picture on the front spelled it all out in a way that he could never deny. That was his father- his father that had been getting better. This shouldn’t have happened- it wasn’t supposed to happen-  _they_  were getting  _better- he_  was getting  _better- this shouldn’t have happened-_

Jack didn’t remember when he had started crying, just that when the older boy found him, crumpled up on the curb, he was. The boy hadn’t said anything, he’d just wrapped his arms around Jack’s shoulders and squeezed him tightly. He’d let Jack shift and cry into his chest in the middle of the city sidewalk, not caring who was looking or judging.

Eventually, Jack’s sobs had softened and dried and the older boy helped him stand. He’d suggested they go somewhere private, and Jack had accepted the offer. He picked his papers up off the ground and moved them into his bag wordlessly, the older boy watching. Jack noticed the older boy didn’t have a stack of his own. He didn’t mention it.

The older boy took Jack’s wrist in his hand and lead him to a building that Jack recognized as the lodging house. He lead Jack to the side of the building and up the fire escape. There were two crates resting on the rooftop. The older boy walked ahead of Jack and sat on one of the crates, then silently patted the other one.

“I recognize that look on your face,” the older boy said. “I had the same one, once.”

Jack didn’t say anything as he sat on the crate. He looked over to the older boy and followed his line of vision out to the city scape stretching out before them.

“It’s beautiful, ain’t it?” The boy said, and Jack nodded. “I always come up here when I’m stuck up in my head. Helps me clear out my thoughts.”

There was a brief second of quiet, filled only with the far off seeming sounds of the city and Jack’s sniffles.

“Everythin’ looks so small from up here, doesn’t it?”

Jack nodded again. The older boy was silent for a moment.

“Let me tell ya somethin’, Jack. I used ta be just like youse once. I used ta feel like everythin’ that happened was my fault. Don’t deny that that’s how ya feel, alright? It’s okay to feel that way. But it ain’t true. There’s nothin’ that can be done to change the past. You gotta know that. Can you know that?”

Jack wasn’t sure he understood, but he nodded anyway. The older boy smiled.

“After you know that, you gotta  _believe_  it. I ain’t gonna ask you to right now. I hope you do some day, though. Let me tell ya somethin’. Them boys down there, they’s mine, the same way youse mine. I don’t ask ya to understand that, but it’s true. Ya lost somethin’ today, Jack. It hurts, don’t it?”

Jack nodded once more, tears stinging at the corners of his eyes again.

“It’s supposed to. But, trust me, it won’t forever. You’ll find somethin’ that makes it stop hurtin’ so bad. For me, that thing was you.”

Jack felt out of breath.

“I’m gettin’ too old to stay at the lodging house. My birthday is in two days. I’ll be too old to stay here then. When I leave, I want you to take my bed. You got that?”

“I.. I have a house ‘a my own. My father’s house.” Jack mumbled out through sniffles.

“Just know it’s open if you need it, alright? Two days.”

Jack nodded, but he didn’t understand.

Three days later, Jack was evicted. His home was seized out from under him- a last asset taken to try to pay off his father’s hospital bills. Jack didn’t understand why they’d charge him when they’d failed to save him.

When he made his way to the lodging house, he found a bed empty and already payed for with a weeks worth of reservation for “Jack Kelley.” He laughed lightly at the misspelling, but didn’t say anything about it. He never saw the older boy again.

The work distracted him from the pain at first. It was easy to forget about his father’s drunken death when he was making up headlines and holding out his small hands to catch coins from pitying ladies and handsome businessmen.

The pain of his father’s departure still flared up sometimes late at night when he laid in his bed at the lodging house. He was lonely, but he was alive. That was all he could ask for. That was all anyone could ask for. He went up to the rooftop to clear his head, silently wishing every time that the older boy would be waiting up there, ready to soothe him. He never was. He had nightmares. He was haunted by what if’s and what could’ve been’s. 

_What if his mother was alive? What if he’d been able to save his father? What if that car hadn’t been speeding? What if his father hadn’t been drunk? What if he’d never picked up that godforsaken bottle in the first place?_

When he got caught up in his head like that he tried to remember the older boys words. Nothing could be done to change the past. He’d promised to know that, but he couldn’t get himself to believe it.

He didn’t remember when he filled the void- he just knew that at some point he did. The empty, hollow hole his father’s death had left in his chest was filled at some point by the boys in the lodging house. Boys that reminded him so much of a younger version of himself. Boys with bruises and scars and haunted eyes so much like he had had once.

Jack didn’t remember when he’d filled the void- but he could assumed it had something to do with the poor kids he saw starving on the streets and how much he wanted to save them-  _how much he wanted to **save them.**_  He’d filled it with the kid with glasses that was too kind for his own good, with the naive child that had a thing for gambling more than he should, with the flirt, with the tiny boy with the twisted leg, with the boy with a nature too high and mighty for a newsie and his sweet kid brother. He filled the void with love for brothers, none of them by blood, but just as important.

Jack did remember what the older boy had said to him once, that, he might’ve lost his dad, but he found something that made up for it. Jack hadn’t understood then, but he thought he understood now.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written as a gift for the amazing [ Crunchie-Morris!](https://crunchie-morris.tumblr.com/) She's a super amazing writer and I love seeing her content on my dash. Check her out if you haven't before!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I'm still trying to figure out how to write the different Newsies characters, so constructive criticism on how I handled each character and the accents would be greatly appreciated, as well as other comments and kudos! The title of this story is taken from the Nick Flynn poem, [ Put the Load on Me. ](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58447/put-the-load-on-me) I recommend giving it a read if you have time!
> 
> Find me on Tumblr at [ EducationalAdmiral! ](https://educationaladmiral.tumblr.com/)


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